Law and economics

The economic analysis of law (also known as law and economics) is an analysis of law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

. Economic concepts are used to explain the effects of laws, to assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and to predict which legal rules will be promulgated

Promulgation

Promulgation is the act of formally proclaiming or declaring a new statutory or administrative law after its enactment. In some jurisdictions this additional step is necessary before the law can take effect....

.

Relationship to other disciplines and approaches

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

s and legal scholars, the phrase "law and economics" refers to the application of the methods of economics to legal problems. Because of the overlap between legal systems and political systems, some of the issues in law and economics are also raised in political economy

Political economy

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

Constitutional economics is a research program in economics and constitutionalism that has been described as extending beyond the definition of 'the economic analysis of constitutional law' in explaining the choice "of alternative sets of legal-institutional-constitutional rules that constrain the...

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

Neoclassical economics is a term variously used for approaches to economics focusing on the determination of prices, outputs, and income distributions in markets through supply and demand, often mediated through a hypothesized maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits...

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...

The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...

perspectives usually do not identify themselves as "law and economics". For example, research by members of the critical legal studies

Critical legal studies

Critical legal studies is a movement in legal thought that applied methods similar to those of critical theory to law. The abbreviations "CLS" and "Crit" are sometimes used to refer to the movement and its adherents....

The sociology of law is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies...

considers many of the same fundamental issues as does work labeled "law and economics".

The one wing that represents a non-neoclassical approach to "law and economics" is the Continental (mainly German) tradition that sees the concept starting out of the Staatswissenschaften approach and the German Historical School of Economics; this view is represented in the Elgar Companion to Law and Economics (2nd ed. 2005) and—though not exclusively—in the European Journal of Law and Economics. Here, consciously non-neoclassical approaches to economics are used for the analysis of legal (and administrative/governance) problems.

Origin and history

Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...

discussed the economic effect of mercantilist legislation. However, to apply economics to analyze the law regulating nonmarket activities is relatively new. In 1961, Ronald Coase

Ronald Coase

Ronald Harry Coase is a British-born, American-based economist and the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. After studying with the University of London External Programme in 1927–29, Coase entered the London School of Economics, where he took...

and Guido Calabresi independently from each other published two groundbreaking articles: "The Problem of Social Cost" and "Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts". This can be seen as the starting point for the modern school of law and economics.

Henry Manne is an American writer and academic, considered a founder of the Law and economics discipline. He is Professor Emeritus of the George Mason University....

(a former student of Coase) set out to build a Center for Law and Economics at a major law school

Law school

A law school is an institution specializing in legal education.- Law degrees :- Canada :...

. He began at Rochester, worked at Miami, but was soon made unwelcome, moved to Emory, and ended at George Mason. The latter soon became a center for the education of judges—many long out of law school and never exposed to numbers and economics. Manne also attracted the support of the John M. Olin Foundation

John M. Olin Foundation

John M. Olin Foundation was a grant-making foundation established in 1953 by John M. Olin, president of the Olin Industries chemical and munitions manufacturing businesses. Unlike most non-profit foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation was charged to spend all of its assets within a generation of...

, whose support accelerated the movement. Today, Olin centers (or programs) for Law and Economics exist at many universities.

Positive and normative law and economics

Economic analysis of law is usually divided into two subfields, positive and normative.

Positive law and economics

Positive law and economics uses economic analysis to predict the effects of various legal rules. So, for example, a positive economic analysis of tort law would predict the effects of a strict liability

Strict liability

In law, strict liability is a standard for liability which may exist in either a criminal or civil context. A rule specifying strict liability makes a person legally responsible for the damage and loss caused by his or her acts and omissions regardless of culpability...

Negligence is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by carelessness, not intentional harm.According to Jay M...

rule. Positive law and economics has also at times purported to explain the development of legal rules, for example the common law

Common law

Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...

of torts, in terms of their economic efficiency.

Normative law and economics

Normative law and economics goes one step further and makes policy recommendations based on the economic consequences of various policies. The key concept for normative economic analysis is efficiency

Efficiency (economics)

In economics, the term economic efficiency refers to the use of resources so as to maximize the production of goods and services. An economic system is said to be more efficient than another if it can provide more goods and services for society without using more resources...

Allocative efficiency is a theoretical measure of the benefit or utility derived from a proposed or actual selection in the allocation or allotment of resources....

.

A common concept of efficiency used by law and economics scholars is Pareto efficiency

Pareto efficiency

Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is a concept in economics with applications in engineering and social sciences. The term is named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution.Given an initial allocation of...

. A legal rule is Pareto efficient if it could not be changed so as to make one person better off without making another person worse off. A weaker conception of efficiency is Kaldor-Hicks efficiency

Kaldor-Hicks efficiency

Kaldor–Hicks efficiency, named for Nicholas Kaldor and John Hicks, also known as Kaldor–Hicks criterion, is a measure of economic efficiency that captures some of the intuitive appeal of Pareto efficiency, but has less stringent criteria and is hence applicable to more circumstances...

. A legal rule is Kaldor-Hicks efficient if it could be made Pareto efficient by some parties compensating others as to offset their loss.

Important scholars

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

Ronald Harry Coase is a British-born, American-based economist and the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. After studying with the University of London External Programme in 1927–29, Coase entered the London School of Economics, where he took...

Gary Stanley Becker is an American economist. He is a professor of economics, sociology at the University of Chicago and a professor at the Booth School of Business. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992, and received the United States' Presidential Medal of Freedom...

, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit judges Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner

Richard Posner

Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...

Andrei Shleifer is a Russian American economist. From its inauguration in 1992 until it was shut down in 1997, Shleifer served as project director of the Harvard Institute for International Developments Russian aid project...

Robert D. Cooter, a pioneer in the field of law and economics, began teaching in the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley in 1975 and joined the Boalt Hall faculty in 1980. He has been a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a recipient of various awards and...

William M. Landes is an economist who has written widely about the economic analysis of law. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which cited him for his pioneering work in the field...

, and A. Mitchell Polinsky. Guido Calabresi, judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, author of the 1970 book, The Costs of Accidents: A Legal and Economic Analysis, wrote in depth on this subject, with Costs of Accidents being cited as influential in its extensive treatment of the proper incentives and compensation required in accident situations.
Calabresi took a different approach in his 1985 book, Ideals, Beliefs, Attitudes, and the Law, where he argued , "who is the cheapest avoider of a cost, depends on the valuations put on acts, activities and beliefs by the whole of our law and not on some objective or scientific notion (69)."

Influence

In the United States, economic analysis of law has been extremely influential. Judicial opinions utilize economic analysis and the theories of law and economics with some regularity. The influence of law and economics has also been felt in legal education. Many law schools in North America, Europe, and Asia have faculty members with a graduate degree in economics. In addition, many professional economists now study and write on the relationship between economics and legal doctrines. Anthony Kronman, former dean of Yale Law School, has written that "the intellectual movement that has had the greatest influence on American academic law in the past quarter-century [of the 20th Century]" is law and economics.

Critique

Despite its influence, the law and economics movement has been criticized from a number of directions. This is especially true of normative law and economics. Because most law and economics scholarship operates within a neoclassical framework, fundamental criticisms of neoclassical economics

Criticisms of neoclassical economics

Neo-classical economics has come under critique on the basis of its core ideologies, assumptions and other matters.-Normative bias:Neoclassical economics is sometimes criticized for having a normative bias. In this view, it does not focus on explaining actual economies but instead on describing a...

have been applied to work in law and economics.

Rational choice theory

Critics of the law and economics movements have argued that normative economic analysis does not capture the importance of human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

Distributive justice concerns what some consider to be socially just allocation of goods in a society. A society in which incidental inequalities in outcome do not arise would be considered a society guided by the principles of distributive justice...

Critical legal studies is a movement in legal thought that applied methods similar to those of critical theory to law. The abbreviations "CLS" and "Crit" are sometimes used to refer to the movement and its adherents....

Duncan Kennedy is the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School and a founder of critical legal studies as movement and school of thought. Kennedy has been a member of the ACLU since 1967. According to his own testimony, he has never forgotten to pay his dues.-Education and...

Mark Kelman is jurist and vice dean of Stanford Law School. As a prominent legal scholar, he has applied social science methodologies, including economics and psychology, to the study of law. He is one of the most cited law professors...

.

Pareto efficiency

Relatedly, additional critique has been directed toward the assumed benefits of law and policy designed to increase allocative efficiency

Allocative efficiency

Allocative efficiency is a theoretical measure of the benefit or utility derived from a proposed or actual selection in the allocation or allotment of resources....

when such assumptions are modeled on "first-best" (Pareto optimal) general-equilibrium conditions. Under the theory of the second best

Theory of the Second Best

In welfare economics, the theory of the second best concerns what happens when one or more optimality conditions cannot be satisfied. Canadian economist Richard Lipsey and Australian economist Kelvin Lancaster showed in a 1956 paper that if one optimality condition in an economic model cannot be...

, for example, if the fulfillment of a subset of optimal conditions cannot be met under any circumstances, it is incorrect to conclude that the fulfillment of any subset of optimal conditions will necessarily result in an increase in allocative efficiency.

Consequently, any expression of public policy whose purported purpose is an unambiguous increase in allocative efficiency (for example, consolidation of research and development

Research and development

The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...

Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...

resulting from a systematic relaxation of anti-trust laws) is, according to critics, fundamentally incorrect, as there is no general reason to conclude that an increase in allocative efficiency is more likely than a decrease.

Essentially, the "first-best" neoclassical analysis fails to properly account for various kinds of general-equilibrium feedback relationships that result from intrinsic Pareto imperfections.

Another critique comes from the fact that there is no unique optimal result. Warren Samuels in his 2007 book, The Legal-Economic Nexus, argues, "efficiency in the Pareto sense cannot dispositively be applied to the definition and assignment of rights themselves, because efficiency requires an antecedent determination of the rights (23-4)."

Responses

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

, argues that our legal, economic, political, and social systems are unduly influenced by an individualistic model that assumes "dispositionism" -- the idea that outcomes are the result of our "dispositions" (economists would say "preferences"). Instead, Hanson argues, we should look to the "situation", both inside of us (including cognitive biases) and outside of us (family, community, social norms, and other environmental factors) that have a much larger impact on our actions than mere "choice." Hanson has written many law review articles on the subject and has books forthcoming.

Contemporary developments

Law and economics has developed in a variety of directions. One important trend has been the application of game theory

Game theory

Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...

to legal problems. Other developments have been the incorporation of behavioral economics into economic analysis of law, and the increasing use of statistical and econometrics

Econometrics

Econometrics has been defined as "the application of mathematics and statistical methods to economic data" and described as the branch of economics "that aims to give empirical content to economic relations." More precisely, it is "the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on...

techniques. Within the legal academy, the term socio-economics has been applied to economic approaches that are self-consciously broader than the neoclassical

Neoclassical economics

Neoclassical economics is a term variously used for approaches to economics focusing on the determination of prices, outputs, and income distributions in markets through supply and demand, often mediated through a hypothesized maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits...

tradition.

Universities with law and economics programs

Almost every major American law school, and most leading economics departments, offer courses in law and economics and has faculty working in the field.

The University of Chicago Law School was founded in 1902 as the graduate school of law at the University of Chicago and is among the most prestigious and selective law schools in the world. The U.S. News & World Report currently ranks it fifth among U.S...

Ronald Harry Coase is a British-born, American-based economist and the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. After studying with the University of London External Programme in 1927–29, Coase entered the London School of Economics, where he took...

Gary Stanley Becker is an American economist. He is a professor of economics, sociology at the University of Chicago and a professor at the Booth School of Business. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992, and received the United States' Presidential Medal of Freedom...

Vernon Lomax Smith is professor of economics at Chapman University's Argyros School of Business and Economics and School of Law in Orange, California, a research scholar at George Mason University Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a Fellow of the Mercatus Center, all in Arlington,...

Chapman University is a private, non-profit university located in Orange, California affiliated with the Christian Church . Known for its blend of liberal arts and professional programs, Chapman University encompasses seven schools and colleges: Lawrence and Kristina Dodge College of Film and Media...

Gordon Tullock is an economist and retired Professor of Law and Economics at the George Mason University School of Law. He is best known for his work on public choice theory, the application of economic thinking to political issues...

Vanderbilt University Law School is a graduate school of Vanderbilt University. Established in 1874, it is one of the oldest law schools in the southern United States. Vanderbilt Law has consistently ranked among the top 20 law schools in the nation, and is currently ranked 16th in the 2012...

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

The admission rate to the University of Connecticut is about 50% and has been steadily decreasing, with about 28,000 prospective students applying for admission to the freshman class in recent years. Approximately 40,000 prospective students tour the main campus in Storrs annually...

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

Established in 1887, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law is one of the oldest professional faculties at the University of Toronto. The Faculty of Law is particularly renowned in the areas of corporate law, international law, law and economics, and legal theory.The law school has been...

offers a combined J.D. / M.A. Economics, as well as a J.D. / Ph.D. Economics.

The European Master in Law & Economics, also known as EMLE, is a Erasmus Mundus post-graduate Master's degree offered by a consortium of nine universities: Erasmus University Rotterdam , University of Hamburg, University of Bologna, University of Ghent, University of Aix-Marseille, University of...

The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...

Copenhagen Business School, also known as CBS, is situated in Copenhagen, Denmark. With more than 17,000 students and 1,300 staff members, CBS is also one of the largest business schools in Europe. CBS offers a wide range of business-oriented university programmes and a research environment...

Since 2009 there has been created a new PhD program in Law and Economics of Finance and Money from Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main/Germany. The program is entirely created for the purpose of research in fields such as regulation of Financial Institutions and Market Regulation. The program is thought to be finished within four years and is entirely taught in English.

The Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, Italy hosts an International Ph.D. Program in Institutions, Economics and Law within the CLEI Centre. Members of the teaching staff come from various academic institutes in Europe and the United States. A separate Doctoral Program in Law and Economics is currently run by the School of Economics at the University of Siena. Also in Italy, the International University College of Turin http://www.iuctorino.it/en/index.html, with students and faculty from worldwide, runs a biennial Master of Sciences in Comparative Law, Economics and Finance, which challenges mainstream views on the subject.

The University of St. Gallen is a public research university located in St. Gallen, Switzerland. It is specialized in the fields of business administration, economics, law, and international affairs. The University of St. Gallen is also known as HSG, which is an abbreviation of its former German...

has a Law and Economics Program on both the undergraduate (Bachelor of Arts in Law and Economics) and graduate levels (Master of Arts in Law and Economics). The graduate program was initiated in October 2005 at the first international scientific conference on Law and Economics by the President of the University, Ernst Mohr and the St. Gallen Professor and leading business lawyer Peter Nobel. The Law and Economics Program is supported by an International Academic Council lead by leading experts in the field of law and economics, such as Richard A. Posner, Ronald J. Gilson, Victor Goldberg or Geoffrey P. Miller.

Utrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....

offers students the possibility to major in law and economics as part of their undergraduate studies, or to specialize in law and economics in a one-year post-graduate programme.

The University of Economics, Prague, is a public university located in Prague, Czech Republic. It is the largest university in the field of economics, business and information technologies in the Czech Republic with almost 20,000 students in its bachelor, masters and doctoral programmes.-Schools...

, specifically the Department of Institutional Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Public Administration, offers Law and Economics as a possible specialization for graduate students, while a complete graduate program is being prepared.

The University of Leicester runs a degree program called 'Economics and Law', with various modules taught in the specific area.The University of Cambridge offers the option of a 'Law and Economics' paper within the Land Economy

Land economy

Land economy is the study of law, economics, and the environment. The University of Cambridge and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology are currently the only universities in the world offering such a degree at undergraduate level....

The University of Cambridge, England, divides the different kinds of honours bachelor's degree by Tripos , plural Triposes. The word has an obscure etymology, but may be traced to the three-legged stool candidates once used to sit on when taking oral examinations...

Not to be confused with Nottingham Business School which is the business school at nearby Nottingham Trent UniversityNottingham University Business School is the business school of the University of Nottingham, England situated on the university's Jubilee Campus...

and City University Law School, London have undergraduate courses in Law and Economics. University College London offers undergraduate courses in Law and Economics in its Economics Faculty and post-graduate courses in its Law Faculty.

The Nalsar University of Law, or officially the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research , is a legal studies institution located in Shamirpet, Hyderabad, India. It was established in 1998 as a state university in an Act of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly...

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

has also launched a graduate degree program on September 2010, titled 'Law and Economics'. The program runs for one year, containing courses and seminars on conventional economic analyses of law, along with the application of these analyses on the energy and telecommunication sectors of Turkey. Seminars and courses are taught in both Turkish and English.

The University of Bonn has recently founded a Center for the Advanced Studies of Law and Economics (CASTLE).

The International Max Planck Research School for Competition and Innovation is a PhD program offered jointly by the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (Germany). The program selects outstanding candidates from the fields of law and economics to produce doctoral research in the area of the law and economics of intellectual property and competition law.

See also

In economics, contract theory studies how economic actors can and do construct contractual arrangements, generally in the presence of asymmetric information. Because of its connections with both agency and incentives, contract theory is often categorized within a field known as Law and economics...

Constitutionalism has a variety of meanings. Most generally, it is "a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law"....

Constitutional economics is a research program in economics and constitutionalism that has been described as extending beyond the definition of 'the economic analysis of constitutional law' in explaining the choice "of alternative sets of legal-institutional-constitutional rules that constrain the...

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

In economics, the legal origins theory states that many aspects of a country's economic state of development are the result of their legal system, most of all where a particular country received its law from...

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

Further reading

Boudewijn Bouckaert is a Belgian law professor, a member of the Flemish Movement, and a libertarian conservative thinker and politician. He chairs the academic board of the LIB-ERA! think tank and serves as Member of the Flemish Parliament for the liberal party List Dedecker...

Gerrit De Geest is a Belgian legal scholar and writer specializing in contract law, law and economics and comparative law.He earned his J.D. in 1983, M.E. in 1986 and Ph.D. in 1993 from Ghent University. With Boudewijn Bouckaert, he was co-editor of Bibliography of law and economics and of the...

Ronald Harry Coase is a British-born, American-based economist and the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. After studying with the University of London External Programme in 1927–29, Coase entered the London School of Economics, where he took...

(1990). The Firm, The Market, and the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, reprint ed. ISBN 0-226-11101-6.

Robert D. Cooter, a pioneer in the field of law and economics, began teaching in the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley in 1975 and joined the Boalt Hall faculty in 1980. He has been a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a recipient of various awards and...

David Director Friedman is an American economist, author, and Right-libertarian theorist. He is known as a leader in anarcho-capitalist political theory, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom...

(1987). "law and economics," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp. 144-48.

Duncan Kennedy is the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School and a founder of critical legal studies as movement and school of thought. Kennedy has been a member of the ACLU since 1967. According to his own testimony, he has never forgotten to pay his dues.-Education and...

(1998). "Law-and-Economics from the Perspective of Critical Legal Studies" (from The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the LawPDF

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics , 2nd Edition, is an eight-volume reference work, edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. It contains 5.8 million words and spans 7,680 pages with 1,872 articles. Included are 1057 new articles and, from earlier, 80 essays that are designated as...

Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...